Daron’s Guitar Chronicles is by Cecilia Tan, the author of many books and short stories. She first began writing about him when she was 16 years old, in high school in suburban New Jersey in the early 1980s. Fragments of stories came and went, and Daron figured in several short stories she wrote for classes in college, though never as the central character. It seemed for many years like Daron’s story was being told to her by the characters all around him. It wasn’t until 1992, in graduate school for a masters degree in writing, that she buckled down and started writing from his point of view.
What followed was six years of work, as Cecilia worked on the tale on and off while finished grad school and starting up Circlet Press. It had quickly become clear that the story was not a traditional 80,000 word novel in the same way that a road movie is not a traditional three-act film. The story was more of a bildungsroman. The original final draft was mammoth in size. Several editors and one agent persuaded Cecilia to cut material equal to the size of a whole novel from it, but what was left was still more than twice the size of a commercial fiction novel.
And so the material–much praised by editors who nonetheless rejected it as unsalable because of its size and scope–sat on Cecilia’s hard drive for about ten years. Until now, when web serialization became a viable reality.
This is a “crowdfunded” project. In other words, if you enjoy what you read here, please consider tossing a tip into the hat or a dollar or two (the donation page is here).
